From the Director of the Committee to End Homelessness in King County: Turn the One Night Count into Positive Momentum!

We’re re-posting this piece from our colleague Lisa Gustaveson at the Faith & Family Homelessness Project, who passes along an important perspective on this year’s One Night Count of Homelessness in King County. Neighboring counties will do their count later this week, and a lot of what Mark and Lisa say applies to those counties as well. Let’s turn our reaction to the numbers into action to make homelessness rare, brief and one time!

On or around January 23, 2015 most regions of the country – and every county in Washington State – completed local Point in Time Counts. These manual counts of people who are experiencing homelessness give us a snapshot of how the homeless system is performing. Last week King County reported a 21% increase in the number of people they found living in places not fit for human habitation. Clearly, we need to make changes to the way we are doing things to reach the outcomes needed to make homelessness rare, brief and one time.

In press release, Alison Eisinger, Executive Director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, which organizes the count, reports a substantial increase over those found without shelter last year. “This year’s Count is heart-breaking evidence that we cannot cover our community’s most basic needs. Clearly, the crisis of people homeless and without shelter is growing, and clearly we…